Maximum size of prey that a single male lion or tiger can kill

[GuateGojira]

(04-17-2020, 11:47 PM)Pckts Wrote: @GuateGojira 

Quote:And also you say that "which wasn't often at all", so now you are calling Dr Karanth and Dr Sunquist liars. I think that you allready reached a point were there is no other excuse from your part that the only thing that you can do is going against the reputation of these experts, and that is veeeeeery low from you part @Pckts.

Stop putting words in my mouth, I've never said anything along these lines. We're both interpreting the same data, you have no conclusive evidence to back your claim and neither do I.

Quote:Dude, is this for real??? You claimed that the animals were not weighed several times, now I show you the image where IT SHOWS that the animals killed were ACTUALLY WEIGHED. The problem is not if the image have a weight or not, is the fact that you continue saying that they did not weighed the carcasses when there is an image that actually shows how they weighed even the biggest gaurs.

I said in the Studies I posted, never did I say that he never weighed a single carcass. Again putting words in my mouth.

Quote: Those were real weights and they just estimated the amount ate by the predators, like I told you, they could easely found gaurs of 900 kg in the carcasses and the rest was estimated based in the amount that a tiger can eat in 24 hours and the amount of days that the tiger was with the kill. Certainly there is no problem with that. And a gaur of 900 kg with an average stomach content will weight 1,000 kg easly. Oh yes, don't forget that those huge figures for gaurs or any big herbivore includes stomach content.

Again there is no single 1000kg weight associated to any kill, it's a range of size for Gaurs.



New study published just yesterday documenting the predation rate of tigers on Gaur and Banteng in Thailand https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.6268
Results :

From June 2005 to May 2017, we visited kill sites of 24 radio—collared tigers (9 males and 15 females) and recorded a total of 82 gaur and 79 banteng kills based on carcass or skeletal remains. Of all gaur killed, 15.9% were adult males and 29.3% were adult females; adult male banteng comprised 29.1% of kills and 26.6% of kills were adult females. (Table 1). In contrast, calves composed 39% of gaur kills versus 26.6% of banteng kills. As a consequence, despite the fact gaur males were approximately 1.3 times heavier than male banteng, and gaur females were 1.1 times the weight of female banteng, the average weights of both gaur killed (397.9 kg) was less than the average weight of banteng killed (423.9 kg) (Table 1).



Based on the average sex and age class weights, and the number of kills in each class, the average weight of adult gaur kills was 737.8 kg and they composed 83.7% of the biomass of gaur killed by tigers. Similarly, the mean adult banteng killed weighted 652.2 kg and adults composed 85.6% of biomass of this species killed by tigers. Adults composed 48.8% of gaur and 79.4% of banteng killed by male tigers; whereas, adult gaur and banteng composed 41.1% and 37.8% of female kills, respectively (Table 2).


None of the prediction that we suggested would be support for the hypothesis that gaur and banteng are approaching the size limit of tiger prey were significant. Prediction 1: Male tigers killed fewer adult gaur (n = 21) compared with adult banteng (n = 27), but the difference was not significant (χ2 = 0.75 (1), p = .386). Prediction 2: Females also killed fewer adult male bovids (n = 11) than adult female bovids (n = 21), but the difference was not significant (χ2 = 2.133 (1), p = .063). Prediction 3: Females did not kill significantly fewer adult gaur and banteng (n = 33) than male tigers did (n = 48) (χ2 = 3.13 (1), p < .090). Given that our three predictions were not supported by significant results, our hypothesis that gaur and banteng are near the upper size limit of tiger prey is not confirmed.





Using dental annuli and horn characteristics to classify age and sex of gaur and banteng, combined with published weights for these classes
Showing estimates again and these Gaur are larger than you see in India.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

at this point there is no new data presented on your end other than the same accounts that we both read and interpreted differently. As of now I see no reason to change my view that a healthy 1000kg big bull should have to worry about losing it's life to a Tiger unless unusual circumstances present themselves. Am I 100% convinced, of course not, it's the wild and the minute anyone thinks they know everything that goes on in the wild they are lost. 
But from what I've seen, if it happens, it is going to be a 1/1,000,000 occurrence.

You say: "Stop putting words in my mouth, I've never said anything along these lines. We're both interpreting the same data, you have no conclusive evidence to back your claim and neither do I."

Sorry but that is exactly what you are saying between lines. If you say that a person is saying/writing something incorrect, you are calling him liar or incompetent, don't you think?

You say: "I said in the Studies I posted, never did I say that he never weighed a single carcass. Again putting words in my mouth."

We are talking of the same study (no plural, there is only one study that you posted and is the same that I posted) and you repeat it several times that the weights were estimated, that they were not weighed. Did I need to put the screenshot of all the times that you said that?

You say: "Again there is no single 1000kg weight associated to any kill, it's a range of size for Gaurs."

That is YOUR claim, not the one of Dr Karanth of Dr Sunquist. Like I explained several times, they DID weighed the animals and they estimated the rest from what the tiger ate. Taking in count the maximum and the minimum that a tiger can eat, 35 and 10 kg respectivelly, and the amount of time that the tiger expended in the prey, they estimated the remain body mass of the carcass.

Sunquist (2010) says that "Tigers will sometimes feed on very large kills for more than a week, and adult gaur seem to provide more meat than a tiger can consume. In Nagarahole, tigers only eat about one-third of the meat on adult gaur carcasses, often walking away from the kill after 3 or 4 days."

So, knowing that a tiger spend a maximum of 4 days in a gaur kill and that they can eat a maximum of 35 kg, we can say that, if they found a carcass of gaur that weighed at least 800 kg, and taking in count the amount ate of about 136 kg, they could estimate that the particular gaur weighed about 940 kg at least. So a bigger animal of at least 900 kg weighed, plus the amount consumed of the tiger, of at least 100 kg (25 kg per day, a good amount for a big male, they could estimate the weigh of the gaur of up to 1000 kg. Even then, you must see that all those carcasses were found killed by tigers, so there is more than enough evidence that tiger do kill males over 800 or 900 kg, and plus the amount ate, the real weight of the animal killed, including the stomach content, was of 1000 kg.

Now, about the study of Thailand (which I allready posted the first details of it in the Indochinese tiger topic), is very insteresting and shows the same trend of that of Nagarahole, althoug in this case it says that they did not weighed the animals, that they used estimations from other studies (still reliable). What interest me is that the average weight of the gaurs (males, females and youngs included?) was of 737.8 kg which is more than the 287 kg recorded in Nagarahole NP in India. That means that the smaller Indochina tigers (average male of c.180 kg and average female of c.115 kg) are killing the huge gaurs with a hunter to hunted ratio of at least 1:4 which is still impresive! And you claimed that bulls in Indochina are bigger than those from India, that means that a large Thailand male of up to 210 kg killing a bull of over 1,000 kg will be a feat more impresive than those from India, don't you think? Let me read the entire study, I need more details of it.

About the claim of the gaur of the tiger found dead, it is interesting that you belive in this record but you ignored and discarted the records where the gaur were killed, I still remember that @peter showed to you those records and you just drop them to the wast basket! Also we have the report of Schaller of the tigress that killed the bull gaur and you just complained that he never saw the actuall kill. So, using your same way thinking, the guy in the report did not saw the fight, so probably "the gaur was allready dead and the tiger just went there, tried to eat the bull but it was so stupid that impalled itself in the horns of the carcasses", that is what you may think.....

Or maybe, because the record do not show a tiger winning is "reliable". The case is that even those two accounts do not show that a tiger can't kill a big bull of over 1,000 kg, for the contrary, it only shows that sometimes the tiger loose the figths, which is perfectly normall in any carnivore. So here are a few accounts of tigers winning, but probably these are "unreliable" for you:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Also, like @Ashutosh said, the tiger "Dasha" or T-03 was a gaur expert, which means that he killed several gaurs of several sizes. The case that you put was just the result of his error.

You say: "at this point there is no new data presented on your end other than the same accounts that we both read and interpreted differently. As of now I see no reason to change my view that a healthy 1000kg big bull should have to worry about losing it's life to a Tiger unless unusual circumstances present themselves. Am I 100% convinced, of course not, it's the wild and the minute anyone thinks they know everything that goes on in the wild they are lost."

In this case you have a personal problem, because all the people, scientists and experts, "interpret" the document of Karanth & Sunqusit (1995) in the same form that I. You say that there is no new data for the moment and that is correct as no study appart from that of Karanth and Schaller took the time to see the sex, health and age of the prey killed. From my part, Dr Karanth, Dr Sunquist and I are 100% sure that a tiger can and do kill gaurs of up to 1,000 kg and that is the scientific status, if you don't belive it is up to you. By the way I will like to clarify that I am not trying to convince you, for the contrary I am just showing to any other reader how wron you are in this point and in fact I am happy because this is an oportunity to show the information then the casual reader will have the oportunity to learn and to see what the scientists do and how even with evidence there is going to be allways people that denied the facts

A side note: THIS is for you Roberto and Rossie, I mentioned both of you here , like I promess. Take note of all this.

Finally, you say: "But from what I've seen, if it happens, it is going to be a 1/1,000,000 occurrence."

Wow, this is funny in many levels!   In table 4 in the document of Karanth & Sunquist (1995) it says that they studied 69 gaur kills, from that 62 were clasified by sex and age and the 14.6% were adult males, which means that 9 adult males were recorded and from that Sunquist & Sunquist (2002) mention that "several" of them were up to 1,000 kg, which means that more than 2 males weighed up to that figure. So with such a relative small sample, we can see that the even of tigers killing adult bull gaur is not 1 in a million, but is more common that we can expect. Reply